Reel Deal: 'Valentine's Day' has a lot of heart

The star-studded romantic comedy “Valentine’s Day” hits plenty of highs and lows as it tracks several romances – from budding to fully bloomed – over the Hallmark holiday.

Robert McCune

If you read last week’s Reel Deal, you know that Valentine’s Day had to be postponed at my house – until my two ill children got babysitter-better.

Ah, well, love is patient, right?

And love – lasting love, anyway – endures much more than snotty noses and ear gunk.

The whole notion of romance changes, too, with marriage and parenthood. Though a box of chocolates and flowers every now and then will still make my sweetie’s day, we most often find romance in things that others might find routine.

Like cuddling on the couch, watching a movie, after the kids are in bed. Or surprising the other with a special dinner – a newly discovered recipe or a twist on the typical menu.

And, when you’re lucky to get one a month, date nights are extra special – they have this way of making you feel like you’re 10 years younger, and to coin an old term, “courting” again.

At a theater near you

With all the chocolate and sickly-sweet sentiment, Valentine’s Day can sometimes give you a stomachache.

Love’s often the same way. When it’s going your way, you can feel like you’re floating on a cloud. When it’s not, you can feel like you’re being trampled by an angry elephant.

The star-studded romantic comedy “Valentine’s Day” hits plenty of highs and lows as it tracks several romances – from budding to fully bloomed – over the Hallmark holiday.

Oddly and improbably enough, the lives of these lovebirds cross and connect, much like a fluffed-up “Crash,” the Oscar darling of 2004.

Maybe we’re showing our age (we’re not that old), but my wife and I connected most with the old, married couple (played by Shirley MacLaine and Hector Elizondo). They’re set to renew their vows on a milestone anniversary when she reveals a long-held secret that puts a wrinkle in the plans.

Ashton Kutcher plays a hopelessly romantic florist who proposes to his strictly business girlfriend (Jessica Alba) on his busiest day of the year. Jennifer Garner is his best gal pal, who thinks she’s found love with a doctor (Patrick Dempsey).

Garner’s best friend (Jessica Biel) is worried no one will show up at her annual anti-V-Day shindig. Meanwhile, something might be brewing between Biel’s character (agent to an aging football star played by Eric Dane) and a TV sports anchor (Jamie Foxx) looking for a scoop that will get him off fluff duty.

Topher Grace plays a mailroom worker who wants more than a one-night stand with a secretary (Anne Hathaway) who, unbeknownst to him, moonlights as a phone sex operator.

And while passengers on a plane (Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts) seemingly flirt, we have to wonder who they’re flying home to on this Valentine’s Day. The answer to that, revealed in the final frames of the film, subsequently caught me off guard and brought a tear to my eye.

Like the film’s plot, the cast connects in cute and curious ways. It’d be fun to play a bit of “Six Degrees of Separation” – though it only takes one degree to connect Kutcher and Grace (“That ‘70s Show”), Roberts and Roberts (aunt and niece), Roberts and Elizondo (“Pretty Woman,” which is cleverly alluded to in a scene in the final credits) and Cooper and Garner (“Alias”).

Guys and gals alike don’t have to wait until next Valentine’s Day to enjoy this flick, but you probably won’t want to watch it without a partner.

If you’re not already under the influence of Cupid’s arrow, “Valentine’s Day” could be a real bummer.

On DVD

Jamie Foxx has come a long way since “In Living Color.” He won an Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles in 2005’s “Ray.”

But, unlike the latest film to feature the flamboyant Foxx (“Valentine’s Day”), his heart’s just not in “Law Abiding Citizen,” new to DVD.

The “citizen,” Clyde Shelton (played by Gerard Butler), isn’t law abiding for long. After a failure of the justice system puts the man who killed his wife and daughter back on the street, he seeks to rattle the blind lady’s scales.

Foxx plays Nick Rice, the assistant district attorney who, seemingly conscience of his precious conviction ratio more than anything, brokered the deal with the murderer that sets Shelton off on a revenge plot 10 years in the making.

To hammer home his point – that there’s no justice in striking deals with killers – Shelton uses his own escalating body count as the terms of deals that are deadly whether they’re followed or not.

To really win – to get what he wants – Shelton’s gotta lose.

The logic’s really sort of ridiculous – kinda like announcing that the floor of a fast-food dive is filthy, then spitting on it to prove your point.

It also doesn’t help that there’s no hero in “Law Abiding Citizen.”

You don’t really know who to root for – and when both Shelton and Rice get what’s coming to them, you don’t really care.

Butler’s not a bad psychopath, and gets in a few choice soundbites (like when through grinning, bloody teeth he rasps, “It’s going to be biblical”).

But you don’t get to see enough of him as a normal, nice family man to be able to like him or really appreciate him when he breaks down.

And the movie’s big reveal – the explanation of how Shelton orchestrated his murderous rampage – has more holes than a target at a police academy shooting range.

I’m throwing the book at “Law Abiding Citizen” because I wanted to enjoy it more. My sentencing recommendation: Life … on a dusty shelf.

Trailer time

Shyamalan and Nickelodeon are two words I never imagined would appear on the same movie poster.

The love-him-or-hate-him king of plot twists, Director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest project is titled “The Last Airbender” (because “Avatar” was already taken) and is based on the animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which ran for three seasons on the Nickelodeon network.

The cartoon, and film, features a 12-year-old “airbender” named Aang, who as the title suggests is the last of his kind.

The boy in the film trailer puts me in mind of “The Golden Child” that Eddie Murphy set out to protect in 1986 – except for the cool arrow symbol tattoo’d on his forehead.

This “avatar” has the power to manipulate earth, water and air in his quest to save mankind.

What remains to be seen is whether Shyamalan (renowned for “The Sixth Sense” and reviled for “Lady in the Water”) still has the power to take our breath away.

Robert McCune is editor of The Independent in Massillon, Ohio. E-mail him at Robert.McCune@IndeOnline.com or call 330-775-1124.

CORRECTION: I got the wrong “Man” in my DVD review last week, referring to the Coen brothers’ latest flick as “A Simple Man” instead of its true title, “A Serious Man.” I regret making such a "simple" mistake – if I’m going to rip on a movie, I should at least get the title right. My only excuse – a weak one, admittedly – is that I got confused by all of the “Men” in my life right now. There’s the Oscar-nominated “A Single Man,” starring Colin Firth. And at The Lincoln this weekend, the John Wayne classic, “The Quiet Man.”

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